CouchPing Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 31, 2026

CouchPing consists of two companion Android apps — the CouchPing Phone app (app.couchping.phone) and the CouchPing TV app (app.couchping.tv) — that let you send short instant alerts from your phone to a fullscreen overlay on your Google TV. This policy explains what data the apps collect, why, and how it’s handled.

1. Data We Collect

CouchPing does not require you to create an account or provide your name, email address, or phone number. The apps collect only what’s needed to pair a phone with a TV and deliver alerts between them:

Data	Collected from	Purpose
Anonymous device identifier (Firebase Auth anonymous UID)	Both apps, generated on first launch	Identifies your phone or TV to the pairing/alert system. Not linked to your real identity.
TV device ID (8-character code)	TV app, generated locally	Lets a phone address a specific TV for pairing. Stored only on that TV.
Device display name	Both apps, entered by you	Shown to the paired device so you can tell devices apart (e.g. “Tadeu’s Phone”, “Living Room TV”).
Alert message text	Phone app, entered by you when sending an alert	Delivered to the paired TV and displayed as an overlay.
Timestamps	Both apps	Records when pairing requests and alerts occur.
App diagnostics (crash reports, error logs)	Both apps, via Firebase Crashlytics	Helps us find and fix bugs.
Usage events (e.g. alert sent, pairing approved/removed, screen views)	Both apps, via Firebase Analytics	Helps us understand feature usage and improve the apps.

We do not collect contacts, photos, location, browsing history, or any data unrelated to the pairing/alert function above.

2. How Data Is Stored and Shared

All pairing and alert data is stored in Firebase Realtime Database (Google Cloud infrastructure), scoped to your paired phone/TV pair only.
Access to each device’s data is restricted server-side by Firebase security rules tied to your device’s anonymous authentication identity — your phone can only read/write data for TVs it has been approved to pair with, and vice versa.
We use the following third-party services, all provided by Google Firebase:
- Firebase Authentication — anonymous sign-in, no personal credentials collected.
- Firebase Realtime Database — stores pairing state and alert messages.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging — used by the TV app to keep the alert listener alive.
- Firebase Crashlytics — crash and error reporting.
- Firebase Analytics — aggregated usage events.
See Google’s Firebase Privacy and Security for how Google processes this data on our behalf.
We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers. We do not run ads in either app.

3. Data Retention and Deletion

Alert messages remain in the Realtime Database until deleted (see “Future Features” in the project roadmap for planned automatic pruning — not yet implemented).
Un-pairing a phone from a TV (from either app) removes that phone’s entry from the TV’s approved list.
To request deletion of your device’s data, email us at [email protected] with the device’s 8-character TV ID or approximate pairing date, and we will remove the corresponding records from the database.

4. Permissions

TV app: Internet access, display-over-other-apps (to show the alert overlay), foreground service, boot-restart (to keep the alert listener running), and notifications.
Phone app: Internet access only.